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Cloning opponents fear loopholes in new UK law

By Andy Coghlan

A new law banning the creation of cloned people in Britain should be in force within a week or so, but opponents of cloning fear there are many potential loopholes. Also, the regulation of so-called “therapeutic cloning”, intended to create cells for tissue and organ transplants, will still be in legal limbo.

The new law is being rushed through parliament to explicitly ban “reproductive cloning”. The law will fill a legal vacuum created by a High Court ruling in favour of the Pro-Life Alliance, a group that opposes abortion and cloning.

The ruling on 15 November wrecked the government’s intention to regulate cloning through the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. Judges agreed with the Pro-Life Alliance that cloned embryos do not come under the act because they do not conform to the act’s definition of an embryo – the fertilisation of an egg with a sperm.

But the government’s new law has not satisfied opponents of cloning – they say it has too many loopholes. The proposed law “makes it an offence to place in a woman a human embryo which has been created by a method other than by fertilisation”.

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Cow-human hybrid

Opponents say that this wording would allow clones to be born by other methods. “It won’t stop human cloned embryos being placed in animals,” says Bruno Quintavalle of the Pro-Life Alliance. “And how would the courts interpret combination of a cow egg with a human embryo,” he says.

Another loophole arises, he says, because the bill does not define fertilisation, or when an embryo becomes a fetus. What if it becomes possible to nurture a cloned embryo in the lab to a point where it is no longer an “embryo”, then implant it into a woman, asks Quintavalle?

The alliance wanted the new law to ban creation of any cloned human embryo, even for therapeutic cloning. “If you allow creation of cloned embryos, it makes it almost inevitable someone will implant them,” says Quintavalle.

Licence to clone

However, the government, and many scientists, believe therapeutic cloning holds such promise that it should be permitted. The government will appeal against the 15 November ruling, hoping to return control of therapeutic cloning to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

This would mean anyone wishing to attempt therapeutic cloning would need an HFEA licence.

“No one has applied for a licence to clone anything anyway,” says a spokesman for the Department of Health. “So legally it’s in limbo, but practically it’s not, because no-one’s doing it,” he says.

The Pro-Life Alliance says that if the government wins its appeal, it will challenge that ruling in the House of Lords.